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Sean Grande's From the Booth

Sean Grande

You can hear the voice of the Celtics, Sean Grande along with Cedric Maxwell call each and every game on the WEEI Celtics Radio Network. You can send him .


From the Booth Archive

WEEI

From the Booth
By Sean Grande
Special to Celtics.com
March 5, 2008

March 5, 2008 - 4:22pm - TD Banknorth Garden - Three-plus hours to tip-off.

This one really is from the booth.

I'm not saying all the other times this space has been a lie, but it's more of a concept, than a literal meaning.

Besides, any of you who've looked down at us from your seats at the Garden, or spotted me during a game telecast, windmilling from side to side, doing wax-on, wax-off, to avoid getting screened by Doc Rivers, know we don't really have a booth, anyway. It's more like a couple of chairs and a table.

So I guess in some ways that is a lie.

In any case, as I sit here, you know, "in the booth", watching Ray Allen go through his pre-game shooting ritual, and the local TV stations setting up for their evening news live shots. Two things that I can assure you were not a part of last Celtics season, I've been thinking not about the game that's about to unfold in front of me, the third and deciding fall in the regular season wrestling match between the Celtics and Pistons that will define this year's Eastern Conference, but rather the rhetoric that's come out of both locker rooms since they last met sixty days ago.

And I was wondering who the first one was to come up with it.

I mean, it couldn't be the sole property of sports, right?

Like if there was media at the time, hyping up the David and Goliath showdown, can you see Goliath, microphones in his face saying, "Yeah, he's small, but there's no one better with a slingshot. He's had a lot of success with it..." And somewhere, in another part of town, reporters gathered around David, tape recorders rolling, peppering him with questions about the showdown. "Well, you guys know, Goliath has been the man around here for years, he's got size, experience, I'm just going to have to stay within myself and give it my best shot."

And it occurred to me, there's a reason Don King stages those ridiculous news conferences.

But there's no playing this down. And the more you think about it...why would you want to?

Celtics Nation has waited two decades for games, for night, like this one. Where in the first week of March, the town, and the whole of the NBA stops because this is the game of the night, one of the games of the year in the NBA. This is what we've all been waiting for.

So why does Round III matter so much? Why are all the eyes on the Garden to watch it play out?

The answer is simple. I'll bet Don King knows it, too.

Episodic television.

The lost art.

Of not just drama and conflict, but its ongoing escalation. The way it used to be on like St. Elsewhere and NYPD Blue. Where something that happened in the fifth episode of season one, comes back to roost in episode twelve of season three.

That's the beauty of tonight. Because we know going in that more snapshots are about to be added to the album. Rajon Rondo's huge first half on national television in December, only to have Chauncey Billups turn the tables and the tide in the second half, getting Tony Allen in the air to draw a foul and the game winning free throws in the final second.

Close your eyes, you can see TA suspended in mid-air. A permanent snapshot.

Seventeen days later, the Celtics were nearly run out of the Palace with 22,000 fans chanting their mantra, "Dee-troit Bask-et-ball". But a remarkable second half turnaround with Paul Pierce's dominant floor game and instead of child to lead them, a Big Baby did. Playing off the future hall-of-famers, the rookie's putback and three-point play sealed the biggest Celtics January win in who knows how long.

Close your eyes, see the captain, pumping his fist, and popping his collar at the Palace, demonstrating in every way there is, that the Celtics were for real. A permanent snapshot.

So put the talk aside for a second, the endless downplaying of significance that's a part of the big-game world we're now a part of. How home court doesn't matter, how it's just another game and my favorite coming out of the mouth of the head coach.

Doc Rivers (and many of his players) regurgitate the same refrain about the Pistons, about how their core, Billups, Hamilton, Wallace and Prince have played nearly three hundred games together. While the Celtics Y2K big three have played a grand total of 45.

And it's true.

But as you open your eyes, and prepare to take in the latest snapshot on the way to what everyone hopes will be a Celtics-Pistons fortnight this May, you might want to keep this in mind.

When the Pistons Four played their 45th game together?

It was the last game of the NBA Finals in 2004...and the snapshot they took that night, was of themselves, holding the trophy.

Anything's possible.


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